America must stand with the Kurds of Syria

The turkey Recep Tayyip Erdogan is playing with and fueling the fires in Syria. Following the major military offensive mounted by the Salafist-jihadist forces of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) at the end of November 2024, Ankara is pursuing a risky objective.

As HTS forces moved to take Aleppo, Syria's second largest city, from regime control, Turkish-backed militias under the auspices of the Syrian National Army (SNA) are trying to drive the Syrian Kurds out of Tel Rifat, Manbij and perhaps all of northern Syria.

The Assad regime, which has managed to hold on to power since the outbreak of civil war in 2011 only with the support of Russian and Iranian forces, was caught off guard. The United States, which currently has about 900 troops advising Syrian Kurdish forces, under the banner of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), appears content to simply observe Russian and Iranian interests are weakening as HTS forces appear determined to overthrow the Assad regime. Rumor also exist, playing with the idea that the Biden administration is convinced that HTS is not a dangerous jihadist entity and should be allowed to pursue its goal of removing Assad from power. If this is Washington's strategy, it is a mistake.

While reluctance toward direct U.S. military involvement in the ongoing conflict is understandable, neither should giving a dangerous jihadist entity carte blanche to determine the future of a major Arab state. be welcome. In addition to or apart from his position on what HTS is doing, what does Biden intend to do with his Kurdish SDF partners, who could be targeted by the SNA and/or the Turkish military?

If the Syrian regime falls due to HTS advances, this could result in a situation in which Syria is either governed by a Salafi-jihadist organization, which has historical links to the Islamic State (IS) and Al-Qaeda, or it becomes an ungoverned space with a gaping power vacuum. On the other hand, if the Biden administration does not take steps to protect the SDF from a possible Turkish military massacre and/or the Turkish-backed SNA, Washington will have abandoned a vital partner that helped defeat the Islamic State and compromising territorial integrity. from Syria even further.

It is certainly clear to the Biden administration that a decapitation of the Assad regime by HTS will not magically create a regional security environment. HTS is, at its core, a jihadist entity whose broader intentions cannot be calculated or trusted. The fluidity of the conflict requires measured thinking on the part of U.S. policymakers, but one that must understand that neither HTS forces nor Turkish actions are motivated by the security concerns of the region, the United States and its partners and allies.

Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan was quick to to announce that Turkey played no role in the rebel uprising against the Assad regime. It's hard to believe, given that turkeys patronage of the SNA, a diverse group of militias, numbering nearly 70,000 fighters, paid and armed by Turkey. While HTS forces moved quickly to capture Aleppo and now aim to take Hama, SNA forces used this as a means to seize Aleppo. opportunity to advance on territory held by the Kurds. Since the start of the Syrian civil war, Ankara has opposed the structured support that Washington provides to the Syrian Kurdish forces in the form of weapons, training and logistics. For the United States, its SDF partners were the secret recipe for ISIS's military defeat. For Ankara, the SDF is an extension of the separatist Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), which Turkey, the United States and the European Union consider a terrorist entity.

But this is where the waters get murky: the FDS is an offshoot of the PKK. Its civilian and military leaders like Salih Muslim and Mazloum Abdi have never denied it, but as a movement, the Syrian Kurds have made clear their intention not to pursue the historic ambitions of the PKK and to carry out terrorist attacks inside Turkey, with the aim of land grabbing. Instead, their goal has been twofold: to fight ISIS, which threatens their very existence, and second, to survive in Assad's Syria after the conflict ends.

On the opposing side, the SNA forces, which Turkey built, are legitimate bad actors. SNA forces were cited for human rights violations against Kurds, Yazidis and women, committing countless atrocities. They have also had skirmishes with HTS fighters, which the Turkish government has also supported in the past. In the past, HTS went by other names, such as Al-Nusra Front and Jabhat Al-Nusra, which was the first penetration of the Islamic State into Syrian territory. Even though HTS's Salafi-Jihadist leader, Abu Mohammed al-Julani, succeeded in renaming the organization, it is worth remembering that it is just that: a rebranding. Neither HTS nor SNA have any progressive goals in mind.

Which brings us to the question of why Turkey would support either or both of these terrorist entities: in the early stages of the Syrian civil war, Ankara supported HTS because Erdogan barely supported near any entity seeking to overthrow the Assad regime, a goal which it largely abandoned after 2016, when Putin came to Syria's aid. Subsequently, portraying Syrian Kurds as terrorists became an obsession for Erdogan, mainly as a rallying cry for the Turks. domestic politics. Erdogan succeeded in demonizing the SDF as identical to the PKK. It should be noted that the Syrian Kurds have not launched any threats or actions against Turkey. Furthermore, before qualifying them as terrorists, Erdogan considered Salih Muslim as a harmless actor, whom he hosted in Ankara in 2012. Finally, there is a nationalist vein within the pro-Erdogan media, eager to expand Turkish territory. After the capture of Aleppo by HTS, pro-Erdogan figures began to encourage the addition of Aleppo to Turkey. 82nd province.

There should be no circumstances in which Washington supports HTS as it attempts regime change. Conversely, Washington must design a realistic strategy to stand alongside its Kurdish partners. This could be achieved simply by strengthening the US presence in Kurdish-held territory in Rojava and clearly communicating to all stakeholders that the US stands with its partners and will not allow harm to be done to them. . Such a message must be communicated very clearly to Ankara, which intends to eliminate the autonomous lands of Rojava.

Syrian Kurds have been resolutely focused on survival and fighting jihadism, while the Turkish-backed HTS and SNA forces harbor far more sinister ambitions. Since the capture of Aleppo, SDF military sources have so far negotiated the withdrawal of Kurdish civilians from rural areas of Aleppo, rather than fighting. What will prevent/deter HTS or SNA forces from demanding a complete withdrawal of Kurds from significant areas of Rojava? It would be difficult for Salih Muslim and Mazloum Abdi, the Kurdish leaders, to accept this, as they would rightly fear displacement and annihilation. If the United States remains silent on this point, it would amount to explicitly accepting that Washington prefers to accept parts (or perhaps all) of Syria that is under jihadist control. We have unsuccessfully fought two great wars against such ideology and sacrificed much blood and treasure. We cannot tolerate its resurgence in Syria, which would inevitably spread beyond its borders if given the chance.

About the author: Sinan Ciddi

Sinan Serious is a non-resident senior researcher at FDD and an expert on Turkish politics. He is also an associate professor of national security studies at Marine Corps University (MCU). Prior to joining MCU, Sinan was Executive Director of the Institute of Turkish Studies, based at Georgetown University (2011-2020). He continues to serve as an adjunct associate professor at the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University. Sinan is the author of Kemalism in Turkish Politics: The Republican Peoples Party: Secularism and Nationalism (Routledge, January 2009), a book that explains the electoral weakness of Turkey's main opposition party, the Republican Peoples Party. He received his Ph.D. from the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London in 2007 in the field of political science.